As wildfires razed swaths of Western Europe this summer, wineries in the region have grown increasingly concerned about the fate of one of the area’s most important exports. In France, Europe’s largest wine exporter by far, some 739,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) of land is dedicated to vineyards that sprawl across wine-making regions such as Languedoc, Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley. So has it been for centuries.
But now, human-induced climate change is causing more extreme weather conditions, threatening the precious and fragile grapes, which are particularly sensitive to heat. Worse, the frequency of wildfires in the tinder-dry forests is rising, causing havoc to agriculture. This year, Western Europe endured one of its hottest summers, aggravated by the El Nino weather phenomenon, which is characterised by hotter, drier conditions.
Europe is now the planet’s fastest-warming continent, and in some places, is ill-equipped to deal with hot weather. This year’s hot season began with a suffocating heat dome in May, and by mid-August, punishing temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas. Wildfires tore through areas of Gironde, southwestern France, close to Bordeaux and in the heart of wine country.
Higher temperatures force grapes to ripen much faster than normal. While that produces a more sugary flavour, it also affects the grape’s natural acidity and pushes up alcohol content in the wine it produces. With forests tinder-dry, destructive wildfires have also broken out at a scale never recorded before, including in wine country.
The 2026 wildfire season in southwest Europe has been one of the worst in decades, with a series of huge blazes recorded in France between June and July. At least 465,000 hectares (115,000 acres) of land have been burned since the start of the year, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters amid the inferno in July. In the southwest Gironde region alone, an area about four times the size of Paris was burned in the largest fire there since 1949.
The department’s capital is Bordeaux, one of the country’s most important wine-growing regions and home to many iconic French wines. Authorities launched a massive evacuation effort, with some 220,000 people needing to leave their homes, including those living close to Bordeaux, as the blazes engulfed the Gironde’s vast pine forests. The fires were so intense that they created lightning bolts and ignited even more flames.
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